Ostravska Banda to Present THE CZECH-AMERICAN MUSIC CONNECTION This Month

In April 2023, the Czech Republic's Ostrava Center for New Music will present two concerts by Ostravská banda in New York City with a program of music by Czech and American composers: on April 20 at the Buchwald Theater at Brooklyn College (part of the new Leonard & Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College) and on April 21 at Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan. Performances are free and open to the public.

Ostravská banda will collaborate with New York's S.E.M. Ensemble, forminga 22-piece chamber orchestra. Both groups were founded by the Czech-American composer and conductor Petr Kotik, who divides his time between New York and Ostrava, Czech Republic, where he directs the bi-annual summer program Ostrava Days, of which the Ostravská banda is one of the two resident orchestras.

• Thursday, April 20, 7 pm: Buchwald Theater, Brooklyn College: 2920 Campus Road, Brooklyn
• Friday, April 21, 7 pm: Bohemian National Hall, 321 E 73rd St, New York

Ostravská Banda's New York tour is made possible with the support of the National Recovery Plan and the City of Ostrava, and in collaboration with the New York-based S.E.M. Ensemble. These concerts seek to connect contemporary music with compositions from the 1960s in an examination of the Czech and American avant-garde music scenes.

Why these concerts? Why now?
In the early 1960s in Prague, Petr Kotik began to be interested in the ideas and concepts of the New York music scene. For the group of composers in Prague which formed around Kotik's ensemble, Musica viva pragensis, this led to a body of work close to the composers of the New York School, which differed from the music that came from Europe. Although the American influences of the New York School gradually spread throughout Europe, Prague was the first place where these American influences had an important impact. When John Cage visited Prague in 1964 and met Rudolf Komorous and Petr Kotík, he told them: "What you are doing in Prague is extraordinary, I have never encountered anything like it".

Further and according to Petr Kotik, "the musical connection between the United States and the Czech Republic goes back to the 19th century when Antonín Dvořák spent years in the U.S. working as well as composing some of his most well-known compositions. The same could be said about Bohuslav Martinů in the mid-20th century. We seek to celebrate such an auspicious association and continue this tradition, showcasing composers' works from 1961 to the present."

The programs include the following composers:

Music from 1961 - 1973

Jan Rychlík

Rudolf Komorous

Frederic Rzewski

Philip Glass

Pauline Oliveros

Contemporary Compositions from 2012 - 2023

Petr Bakla*

František Chaloupka* (world premiere)

Petr Kotik *

Jana Vörösová*

Pavel Zemek Novák

Roscoe Mitchell* (world premiere of a new version)

Phill Niblock*

Christian Wolff*

* indicates in-person participation

Selected composers, alongside members of Ostravská banda and S.E.M. Ensemble, will also meet young composers at an afternoon seminar on April 20 at Brooklyn College.

Complete program: Buchwald Theater @ Brooklyn College, April 20 at 7 pm

Roscoe Mitchell: Nonaah (1977)
Jan Rychlík: African Cycle (1961)
Frederic Rzewski: Les Moutons de Panurge (1969)
František Chaloupka: The Witch Waltzers (2023)
Philip Glass: Two Pages (1968)
Phill Niblock: Petr's Charm (2021)

Complete program: Bohemian National Hall, April 21 at 7 pm

Petr Kotik: Nine + 1 (2012)
Petr Bakla: Elsewhere (2017)
Christian Wolff: Trust (2012)
Roscoe Mitchell: Improvisation Pauline Oliveros: Meditation for Orchestra (1997)
Jana Vörösová: Oratio Phillipica (2021)
Pavel Zemek Novák: Quartet no. 3 / In Memory of Evžen Plocek (1998)
Rudolf Komorous: Olympia (1964)

Formed in 2005 as the resident chamber orchestra for the biennial Ostrava Days, Ostravská banda consists of some of the top young musicians from Europe and the U.S. whose primary interest is the performance of new music. Principal conductors are Petr Kotik, Jiří Rožeň, Johannes Kalitzke, and Roland Kluttig. Conrad Harris (New York) serves as the orchestra's concertmaster. The repertoire includes composers of the 20th century: John Cage, Morton Feldman, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Edgar Varèse, Iannis Xenakis and our contemporaries Louis Andriessen, Petr Cígler, Petr Kotik, Bernhard Lang, Alvin Lucier, Tristan Murail, Phill Niblock, Salvatore Sciarrino, Wolfgang Rihm, Martin Smolka, Peter Graham, Petr Bakla or Christian Wolff. Apart from regular performances at Ostrava Days festivals, Ostravská banda tours and has performed at such venues as the Paris Conservatoire, Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center (NY), Akademie der Künste in Berlin, Vredenburg in Utrecht, Prague Spring Festival, musicadhoy in Madrid and at NODO / New Opera Days Ostrava, where it serves as the festival's opera orchestra. Ostravská banda is renowned for its ability to perform even the most complex of 20th and 21st century works and has been the inspiration behind various composers' new pieces.

S.E.M. Ensemble was founded in 1970 when Petr Kotik organized a group of musicians of the fellows at the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, SUNY/Buffalo. Kotik joined the Center a few months earlier when he arrived from Prague in November, 1969. Among the founding members of SEM were the composer Julius Eastman and the percussionist Jan Williams. The first S.E.M. Ensemble concert was presented in April of that year in Buffalo at the Domus Theater in the former showroom of the Pierce- Arrow car manufacturer. The program included works by Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Petr Kotik and Rudolf Komorous. Under the headline, "Ensemble Audience in Retreat," the concert review's opening sentence read, "An audience of 17, including wives and other relatives, remained out of an original 100 attendees, at the conclusion of the newly-formed S.E.M. Ensemble, setting some sort of local record..." Since then, S.E.M. Ensemble has established itself as one of the distinguished ensembles for new music in the U.S., maintaining a continuous schedule of concerts in New York, touring annually in Europe and also performing in South America and Japan. New York Times has hailed SEM, "S.E.M. Ensemble represents the best of what is left of the experimental tradition." SEM is the oldest, continuously performing new music group in the U.S. S.E.M. Ensemble continues to perform a yearly series of concerts at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and at the Willow Place Auditorium, its own space in Brooklyn Heights. SEM also performs major concerts at high-profile venues such as Carnegie Hall (Stern and Zankel Halls), Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Merkin Concert Hall.

Visit these links to learn more about this collaboration:

Ostravská banda (newmusicostrava.cz/en/ostravska-banda/orchestra)
S.E.M. Ensemble (semensemble.org)
Conductor Jiří Rožeň (jirirozen.com)